HTML5-based MeeGo successor Tizen hits 1.0 milestone

Tizen, the successor of the ill-fated MeeGo project, has reached version 1.0

The technical steering group behind the Tizen project—an effort to build a mobile platform with a Linux base—issued a statement yesterday announcing the release of version 1.0, codenamed Larkspur. It offers a number of improvements over the original developer preview that was released in January, including a new simulator for testing Tizen applications on the desktop.

Tizen is a Linux-based mobile platform that is backed by Intel, Samsung, and the Linux Foundation. It is the successor of the MeeGo project, which fell apart when Nokia shifted its platform strategy to focus on Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system. Unlike MeeGo, Tizen isn’t closely aligned with the upstream Linux desktop stack. Instead, its userspace environment is largely built with Web technologies.

The Tizen development stack also offers its own set of HTML-based user interface widgets that can be used to create applications that look and feel consistent with the rest of the platform. This widget set appears to be based largely on jQuery Mobile and uses other jQuery components extensively under the hood.

Although Samsung is standing behind the project, it’s not entirely clear yet how it will fit into the company’s scattershot platform strategy. Samsung also develops its own Linux-based Bada platform, is a leading Android handset vendor, and has built several Windows Phone 7 devices. There are no Tizen-powered devices in the market yet, but that could change now that the platform has reached the 1.0 milestone.

Samsung, probably, since it's 90% their internal distribution they've been developing and 10% whatever Intel brings to the table. People keep wondering if Samsung will fork Android, I suspect if they were to do that, they'll taper off Android and move to a solution that doesn't require them to assume so much extra development.

I really take issue with this "MeeGo successor Tizen". It really is not, Intel and the Linux foundation have tried to frame it as that, as far as I can tell Samsung themselves never have, they have after all been working on this for longer than Meego even existed. Then there is of course that fact that it appears to have inherited pretty much nothing from Meego. QT is gone, oFono is nowhere to be seen, and so far it doesn't even appear to allow native development(which incidental uses EFL not inherited from Meego,Maemo or Moblin), certainly does not encourage it. It also , purely subjectively of course, is horrendously ugly next to Meego,Moblin or Maemo.

Also a correction "Samsung also develops its own Linux-based Bada platform", Bada could run on a Linux kernel and there has been talk of porting it to Tizen, but currently it runs on a propriety real time kernel.

Being otherwise completely ignorant of the difference, I might be concerned about native layer security issues in Tizen -- knowing that Google has put a very strong effort into NaCl to ensure code safety.

Instead, its userspace environment is largely built with Web technologies.

Blech, dead on arrival. Whoever had the "great" idea to take web technologies as the basis for Operating Systems. (ChromeOS is DOA too)

Web technologies are not used because they are great but because people HAVE TO use them.

Javascript sucks, HTML is good for displaying information but terrible for creating complex UI applications. The combination is a unholy suck^2. By and large development environments are much worse than normal dev environments, etc. pp. People have to use them for web apps because those are the only tools running in a browser in a standardized way but it takes ten times the effort and looks ten times shittier than using native APIs.

Also the reasons native iOS and Android applications are so successful because people can actually use good development tools to make apps.

So who in gods name had the idea that it would be cool to intentionally cripple the development API for no reason? After all all the valid reasons for using DHTML are not there anymore when you develop applications running locally. The brainfart that is ChromeOS I understand after all for Google employees who have a HUMONGOUS web hammer everything looks like a nail, but why why did they cripple Meego? Using an API framework based on GT actually makes tremendous sense and sounds like the best possible technology stack. (Which is the reason I hate WinOS on Nokia so much, Meego sounded cool)

Blech, dead on arrival. Whoever had the "great" idea to take web technologies as the basis for Operating Systems. (ChromeOS is DOA too)

Yet iOS supports them, even Windows 8 touts JS/HTML5 apps.

Quote:

Web technologies are not used because they are great but because people HAVE TO use them.

No argument. I prefer native software myself.

Quote:

why did they cripple Meego? Using an API framework based on GT actually makes tremendous sense and sounds like the best possible technology stack. (Which is the reason I hate WinOS on Nokia so much, Meego sounded cool)

Blech, dead on arrival. Whoever had the "great" idea to take web technologies as the basis for Operating Systems. (ChromeOS is DOA too)

Yet iOS supports them, even Windows 8 touts JS/HTML5 apps.

Quote:

Web technologies are not used because they are great but because people HAVE TO use them.

No argument. I prefer native software myself.

Quote:

why did they cripple Meego? Using an API framework based on GT actually makes tremendous sense and sounds like the best possible technology stack. (Which is the reason I hate WinOS on Nokia so much, Meego sounded cool)

So since this project is now starting to become stable and all that, when will Intel decide to abandon it and create the next project?

More serious: While I think that a company can easily sell devices from more than one OS, I really don't see where Tizen fits into the spectrum. We have bada for the low end market and android/winphone for the higher regions.

As winphone clearly demonstrates it's not easy getting enough steam with 3rd party devs for the millions of applications that are expected on a modern smartphone OS and contrary to Microsoft, Intel/Samsung/Co don't really have that kind of standing with the development communities that MS profits from. Seems to me "too little, too late" though mostly the later. Also Intel is a notoriously unreliable partner there and considering there are already android phones on x86, I don't really see why they'd want to be engaged in the project at all.

Not in name anyway or with Intel involvement, but what Tizen is has been in the works in Samsung for quite some time.

Indeed, but had Intel not come knocking I suspect Samsung would have held off on moving it out into the open for a while longer. Conjecture down that path is a bit silly, though, as it's a "not what happened" scenario.

Voo42 wrote:

So since this project is now starting to become stable and all that, when will Intel decide to abandon it and create the next project?

If Samsung walks away? That's what killed MeeGo, and they went into that with Moblin, which effectively was the netbook/tablet version.

Quote:

More serious: While I think that a company can easily sell devices from more than one OS, I really don't see where Tizen fits into the spectrum. We have bada for the low end market and android/winphone for the higher regions.

Samsung could use Tizen to replace Bada at the low end and Android at the high end. This reduces duplicate efforts in the company and takes their future in the high end out of Google's hands. I suspect that Android is very much a target here.

As winphone clearly demonstrates it's not easy getting enough steam with 3rd party devs for the millions of applications that are expected on a modern smartphone OS

While "millions" is an overstatement, yes, the development platform for a smartphone OS is crucial. Windows Phone is having a hard time, the newest Angry Birds for example did not launch on it, only on Android and iOS.

But Tizen has more of a chance than a completely new platform. Tizen's development platform is web-based, which is familiar to a lot of people and in may cases it is trivial to port web apps to it. That has a better chance of working than a completely new platform, and that's why a lot of mobile OSes use the web as their platform (aside from Tizen, there is B2G and WebOS).

But even with that it's still very hard for any new mobile OS, given the position iOS and Android have.

But Tizen has more of a chance than a completely new platform. Tizen's development platform is web-based, which is familiar to a lot of people and in may cases it is trivial to port web apps to it.

True and I assume there are more people who are knowledgeable with JS+Html5 than there are people who know .NET, but I'm not sure how large that factor really is. Even if you have all those experienced devs, there's always more work than manpower. True you can easily port web apps to Tizen (I'd hope at least), but still a large number of apps for both android/iOS are written with native code I think - maybe using some framework that allows to easily port between the major platforms.

It's already a hard sell for lots of development firms to release something for WinPhone and MS always had a really good connection with their devs. It seems to me that Tizen is basically in the same position as WinPhone more than a years ago, but without the strong backing from MS (and I just don't see Intel or Samsung stepping up in that regard)

Android is so laggy and battery-draining that it just won't last very long in the face of competition (seriously have you ever tried loading an image heavy webpage on ICS? The response lag is horrendous). It provides such an inconsistent user experience and more modern mobile OS's are much more stable. It only succeeded as the lone iOS copycat/alternative and with Verizon's branding push.

Tizen is useless. What's the point of an OS that lacks native development? Even webOS learned its lesson. Why hamper your OS on such resource limited hardware? Just stupid.

Instead, its userspace environment is largely built with Web technologies.

Blech, dead on arrival. Whoever had the "great" idea to take web technologies as the basis for Operating Systems. (ChromeOS is DOA too)

Web technologies are not used because they are great but because people HAVE TO use them.

Javascript sucks, HTML is good for displaying information but terrible for creating complex UI applications. The combination is a unholy suck^2. By and large development environments are much worse than normal dev environments, etc. pp. People have to use them for web apps because those are the only tools running in a browser in a standardized way but it takes ten times the effort and looks ten times shittier than using native APIs.

Also the reasons native iOS and Android applications are so successful because people can actually use good development tools to make apps.

So who in gods name had the idea that it would be cool to intentionally cripple the development API for no reason? After all all the valid reasons for using DHTML are not there anymore when you develop applications running locally. The brainfart that is ChromeOS I understand after all for Google employees who have a HUMONGOUS web hammer everything looks like a nail, but why why did they cripple Meego? Using an API framework based on GT actually makes tremendous sense and sounds like the best possible technology stack. (Which is the reason I hate WinOS on Nokia so much, Meego sounded cool)

I don't know what world you've been in, but HTML these days is pretty awesome for interface design, at the very least it's great for quickly prototyping something. The main draw is the speed with which you can make the interface.

Instead, its userspace environment is largely built with Web technologies.

Blech, dead on arrival. Whoever had the "great" idea to take web technologies as the basis for Operating Systems. (ChromeOS is DOA too)

Web technologies are not used because they are great but because people HAVE TO use them.

Javascript sucks, HTML is good for displaying information but terrible for creating complex UI applications. The combination is a unholy suck^2. By and large development environments are much worse than normal dev environments, etc. pp. People have to use them for web apps because those are the only tools running in a browser in a standardized way but it takes ten times the effort and looks ten times shittier than using native APIs.

Also the reasons native iOS and Android applications are so successful because people can actually use good development tools to make apps.

So who in gods name had the idea that it would be cool to intentionally cripple the development API for no reason? After all all the valid reasons for using DHTML are not there anymore when you develop applications running locally. The brainfart that is ChromeOS I understand after all for Google employees who have a HUMONGOUS web hammer everything looks like a nail, but why why did they cripple Meego? Using an API framework based on GT actually makes tremendous sense and sounds like the best possible technology stack. (Which is the reason I hate WinOS on Nokia so much, Meego sounded cool)

I don't know what world you've been in, but HTML these days is pretty awesome for interface design, at the very least it's great for quickly prototyping something. The main draw is the speed with which you can make the interface.

I'd second this. There is no longer any excuse for substandard HTML, be it for desktop or mobile. Due to the change in usage patterns, this is where things are moving. As with traditional desktop apps, the user experience is key. Many apps for Android and iOS are merely containers for HTML content, anyway.